Use What You Have Decorating : Transform Your Home in One Hour With Ten Simple Design Principles — Using the Space You Have, the Things You Like, the Budget You Choose

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6 responses to “Use What You Have Decorating : Transform Your Home in One Hour With Ten Simple Design Principles — Using the Space You Have, the Things You Like, the Budget You Choose”

1. 

   Justus Pendleton

   July 25, 2011

   149 of 154 people found the following review helpful:

   
   too many restrictions, April 8, 2002

   By 

   Justus Pendleton (Colorado Springs, CO United States) –
   
     

   This review is from: Use What You Have Decorating : Transform Your Home in One Hour With Ten Simple Design Principles — Using the Space You Have, the Things You Like, the Budget You Choose (Paperback)

   A better title for this book would have been “How to Rearrange Your Single Purpose Living Room If You Have a Fireplace And Nice Furniture to Create a Comfortable Conversation Area”. She talks exclusively about living rooms and 90% of the problems she shows are solved by moving the furniture closer together so people can hold a conversation comfortably. And not just any living room but a certain kind of formal living room. Almost every room she shows has a fireplace and has a very regular geometric shape. How do I create a focal point if my living room is an octagon with windows on almost every wall and no windowless wall is big enough to put a couch under? Only one room she shows has a television in it. How do I create a comfortable conversation area that also lets me (and my guests) watch television? How can the fireplace be the focal point of the room if I also have a television in it? What if I live in a 800 square foot apartment and don’t have the space for the strict separation of duties that she seems to advocate? What if I don’t have a family room to put the television in? What if I don’t like my furniture or want to add to my collection? While I find her low-cost use-what-you-already-have approach a nice alternative to the spend-$20,000-and-change-everything approach, sometimes just rearranging your furniture and art isn’t going to cut it.

   Instead what we get are 10 basic design guidelines. And I do mean basic. I honestly have to wonder about all of these people who have fireplaces and don’t use them as the focal point of the room. While it seems like what she says is just common sense, I suppose there is some good in having it written down. It just seems like it isn’t really enough information to fill an entire book and then charge $16 for it.

   I didn’t find the lack of color as annoying as some other reviewers but that’s because Ward’s design consists primarily of physical arrangement; the use of color wouldn’t have helped make things much clearer but definitely would have added to the cost of the book. Towards the end of the book she gives some lip service to the use of color and in that part of the book color photographs would have been useful.

   It is also somewhat surprising that a book published in 1998 (my edition was published in October 1999) doesn’t have a single URL to any of the sources she provides at the end of the book.

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2. 

   And You May Find Yourself

   July 25, 2011

   82 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Down-to-earth advice for everyone, October 21, 2002

   By 

   And You May Find Yourself (Greece) –

   This review is from: Use What You Have Decorating : Transform Your Home in One Hour With Ten Simple Design Principles — Using the Space You Have, the Things You Like, the Budget You Choose (Paperback)

   The most useful feature of this book is the list of major decorating mistakes: the author illustrates them clearly, so you can see why they are mistakes, and offers simple, inexpensive solutions. The before-and-after black and white photos of unmistakably real homes (first two pages: what’s wrong here? overleaf: how did we fix it?) are very convincing. You’ll get a lot of basic knowledge out of this book: how to create a good conversation space, how to create “flow” in a room, how to avoid visual clutter, what to do with collections. Her method of presentation teaches you what questions you need to ask yourself in order to show your own furniture and space to its best advantage. Which is what decorating is all about, right?

   I have a few quibbles: why does Ward assume that only men are interested in good hi-fi equipment while women would be happy with anything that doesn’t interfere with their decorating scheme?? I beg to differ… Her style is generally rather “feminine” – she’ll encourage you to use lots of pillows and throws – which isn’t for everyone.

   The only major gap in this book is how to use colour to improve the look of your space. She’s of the “white and/or beige is best for all rooms” school. Boring, boring, boring. Myself, I’m fixing to paint my dining room red.

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3. 

   Jennifer Gregory

   July 25, 2011

   46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

   
   An excellent book on arranging, February 15, 2000

   By 

   Jennifer Gregory (Raleigh, NC) –

   This review is from: Use What You Have Decorating : Transform Your Home in One Hour With Ten Simple Design Principles — Using the Space You Have, the Things You Like, the Budget You Choose (Paperback)

   I found this book to be extremly helpful because it guides you through creating a visually pleasing home that is also functional by rearranging items that you already have. So many people have beautiful things in their home and expensive furniture, but do not arrange these items so their rooms “work”. This book gives you practical advice that you can really implement in an hour or two. It fullfills a need that is overlooked in most interior decorating books.

   This book does not focus on interior decorating as a whole or the components that are traditionally addressed in interior decorating books(picking a style, a color theme, window treatments, picking furniture and accessories). This book concentrates on the arranging portion of decorating. The book does not contain color photos (However, I did not find that to be an issue and actually found black and white to be helpful in this case because it didn’t distract me from the topics). If you are looking for a book to guide you through the overall decorating process, you will be disappointment with this book. Check out Better Homes and Gardens New Decorating Book for a complete book on interior decorating. However, if you are looking for a book to help you arrange your stuff, then you will be absolutely thrilled with this book and the results you produce.

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4. 

   Deborah Brooks

   July 25, 2011

   55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Better than chocolate!, August 27, 2002

   By 

   Deborah Brooks (Savannah, GA USA) –

   This review is from: Drawing Shortcuts: Developing Quick Drawing Skills Using Today’s Technology (Hardcover)

   The only way Jim Leggitt could make this book better would be to package it with a quarter pound of really good chocolates. I’ve chosen to overlook that omission since this book is exactly what I wanted to use in my rendering classes at the Savannah College of Art & Design. This is a twenty-first century handbook for rendering in color.

   Thirty-one students (two classes) proved to me this summer that Drawing Shortcuts works for learning how to make and render drawings in color quickly, effectively and relatively economically. The final projects reflect ten weeks of increasingly stronger skills and confidence in drawing/rendering abilities. Both graduate and undergraduate students with varied levels of computer expertise found value in the Drawing Shortcuts approach of “Let Technology Do Your Dirty Work”.

   Bottom line: a relaxed learning atmosphere in studio, fearless renderers willing to experiment with color media and striking final projects. The studio professors are commenting on the improvement in rendered drawings in their classes, too. Leggitt’s methods are weaning students from a dependence on computer-generated images. The enhanced freehand drawing skills complement the computer drawing skills. Students now have many options for graphic expression which reflect their individual needs and desires.

   I teach rendering classes for interior design students in the School of Building Arts at SCAD. We’ll be using this book every quarter. Thanks, Jim Leggitt. But think about the chocolates with the second edition of the book!

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5. 

   R. E. Middlebrooks

   July 25, 2011

   27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Every Architect and Student Must Have This Book !, April 5, 2002

   By 

   R. E. Middlebrooks (Chesapeake, VA USA) –
   
     

   This review is from: Drawing Shortcuts: Developing Quick Drawing Skills Using Today’s Technology (Hardcover)

   This book is an instant classic, that every architect and architectural student must get. Many of us grew up using the techniques taught by Michael Doyle in his book “Color Drawing”. Jim Leggitt’s techniques are even more geared toward the pace of productivity we all face. Using all the advantages of current technologies, including cameras, copiers, and printers he shows you exactly how to improve or gain the skills it takes to produce fast and effective visualizations. Some of the techniques are so insightful and helpful, as to immediately payback the cost of the book. Great color photographs help guide you step by step. This book is packed full. No one interested in drawing technigues should miss this book.

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6. 

   Anonymous

   July 25, 2011

   31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Great Book, November 24, 2002

   By A Customer

   This review is from: Drawing Shortcuts: Developing Quick Drawing Skills Using Today’s Technology (Hardcover)

   I am an architecture student. The content of this book isn’t by any means revolutionary, but it is smart. Basically the whole argument revolves around tracing as a basis for developing drawings, a concept I kind of thought of as cheating before reading this book. That sounds simple enough, but it is worth buying the book to find out all of the interesting ways he is able to develop a traced framework – ways I would never have thought of. He could have gotten everything he wanted to get across in half the pages, but then the book wouldn’t look very serious.
   Buy this book: the quality of your drawings may or may not increase from reading it, but you’ll be able to produce twice as many in the same time.

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